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A few weeks before she officially steps down after 36 years on the job, Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion sat down with the Star to talk about the city she’s built, working in a man’s world, what she wishes she’d done differently — and what the future holds for this 93-year-old. The interview has been edited for length.

Q. What’s it been like, as a woman, rising up through the business ranks from an assistant to running the Toronto office of an international engineering firm as the Second World War was coming to an end, and then getting into politics?

A. Women have to work harder; there’s no question about it. When I ran as deputy reeve of Streetsville in 1967, the women worked against me. They couldn’t understand how a woman would want to get into a man’s world, because the mayor and all the members of council were men.

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When I ran in ’78 as mayor of Mississauga, I believe the women played a large role in getting me elected. A lot changed over that decade. I know of many families where the husband was working for my opponent and the wife was working for me. In 10 years there was a difference. It just shows, you need women supporting women . . . both in the public sector and the private sector.

When I see a woman become the head of something like General Motors, I write a letter and congratulate them, just to show that women do support women both in the private sector and in the (public sector). We would be further ahead if more women would support women. There’s no question about it: Women have to work harder.

When I was in the private sector, why did I rise to that? I rose to that because I proved to them I was committed to be a success and for them to be a success, the company to be a success.

Q. You took that same approach to politics, making sure that Mississauga would be a success story. Why has your booming city — widely considered one of the most dynamic suburbs in North America — become such a success?

A. You have to involve many aspects of the community and people to get their vision. Everybody has a vision for the community in which they want to live. You put that all together. You assess it. You look at it. You’ve got to respect the opinions of everybody. You may not agree with them, but you must be sure you hear them. You’ve got to be open . . . When you go to the coffee shop or the barbershop, etc., you get some excellent ideas. You sort of put everything into the mill and out of it comes (the vision).

Maybe it’s you promoting it, but it probably wasn’t your idea, it’s the idea of others and suggestion of others. What I’ve tried to do as mayor is communicate with as many people . . . for example, I talk to a lot of taxi drivers. I get a lot of ideas from taxi drivers. Just yesterday, the president of eBay Enterprise came in from the United States. He took a taxi from the airport and he was just amazed at what the taxicab driver knew about the mayor. He said, “I couldn’t believe it.” He was absolutely amazed. It’s because the taxicab industry knows me.

Q. You have been called the “Queen of Sprawl,” despite your recent efforts to address traffic gridlock across the GTA, bring in rapid transit and intensify Mississauga’s city centre. Is that title unfair?

A. I don’t know of any city that hasn’t started with sprawl. Don Mills in Toronto is a good example. The decision-makers and the developers and the builders, even if they want to build something of their own desire, if they can’t sell it, it won’t be occupied. When the people came out to Mississauga in the early days they did not come out to live in a highrise, they came out to live in a single-family home.

So therefore (Harold) Shipp and Iggy Kaneff, at that time, and all the others, Cadillac Fairview and Morguard, built single-family homes. That’s what the people wanted. That’s what they could sell. There wasn’t much point in them building a lot of highrises that would remain vacant.

Now, people are tending towards, want to live, in highrises. But in those days, in the ’60s, the ’70s and the ’80s, people worked hard, especially immigrants, if they worked hard and settled in Toronto, rented, saved up their money, they wanted to have a place of their own. That’s what happened to other communities, not just Mississauga — Markham, Oakville, Milton etc. People are now coming out and living in condominiums. Condominiums are what people want. What’s the point of a builder building a highrise and condominiums back in the ’70s and ’80s? They couldn’t sell. You had to build what the people wanted.

Now, we have the highest density, next to the city of Toronto. We’re building the highest density in the right locations.

Q. If you could do it all over again, what decisions that you made for your city would you change?

A. The way the subdivisions were designed (is) not acceptable for transit . . . Single-family homes don’t want transit running along their street. So it isn’t easy to sell transit in a municipality that started with single-family homes. Cul-de-sacs and crescents doesn’t provide good routes for transit. You go through our residential areas and we have an awful lot of cul-de-sacs and crescents. You have to have density to build transit: Single-family home, they want a car.

When we developed Mississauga you would have one car in the driveway . . . now it’s three to four. Now we have cars in the space between the sidewalk and the street . . . The car has taken over. When we built Mississauga . . . the car was not in control.

I think we should have put more money into transit. We tried to get the expansion of transit into our . . . development levies, and we were rejected on that. The development industry wouldn’t accept it, so we struggled with that and weren’t able to do it. Knowing what I know now . . . as development was approved, transportation was never a high issue. Our transportation people didn’t recognize the need or recommend to us that we should be more conscious of the transportation needs.

I don’t know of any municipality across Canada that has given transportation the priority that it should have had from day one . . . That’s why all cities are facing transportation problems; it’s just as simple as that.

Q. You are someone who has to keep yourself extremely busy. At 93 you still keep a daily schedule that’s hard to believe. What will you do after November 30th, when you officially step down?

A. My book is coming out, the launch of my book (a memoir). They want me to be appearing in a lot of places, etc. So I’m going to be busy after November the 30th. But I’m still dealing with some major issues (in the mayor’s office) that I’d like to get settled before I leave the office. I’m not going to make any decisions (on the various long-term work offers she’s received) until January . . . I would like to read the odd book . . . I haven’t had time to read — I’m too busy reading reports and agendas and documents. I’m going to enjoy those things.

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